Evolve and the STR Sites

[Zak House]

Just jumped into my first STR and it's been an "interesting" process with property management companies. Based on size/scale/pricing, I decided to sign up with Evolve and it was a shaky onboarding process. Just when I thought we were in the clear and the property was listed, new information came to light! While we agreed on a weekday nightly rate of $179 to start and cleaning fee of $185, I quickly realized that EVOLVE site had it listed as agreed upon, but Air BNB/VRBO were higher on both nightly rate and cleaning fee (ex Air BNB at $203 per night and $191 cleaning fee).

When I questioned EVOLVE, they blamed the STR sites and stated Air BNB/VRBO increase both the nightly rate and cleaning fee to cover "3rd party listing rates". This wouldn't make much sense, as they only get a small percent of that nightly rate, meanwhile they get all of the fees/services charges. So why wouldn't they just capture it there (and seem to actually do).??

This has me believing that EVOLVE might be just listing it higher on those sites to try to drive more booking directly through EVOLVE.com.

Any insight?